Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
After my sister attended our Hamburg LW meetups two times I couldn’t any longer turn down her invitation to attend her christian home group—at least not without feeling unfair. This is a short account of what came out of that.
One topic of that home group meeting was “belief and science—conflict or not?” so there was lots of opportunities to tie in rational arguments (actually I had prepared by printing out this; I didn’t use it as is but I did cite Eliahs ‘experiment’ as an example—for funny effect). I didn’t conceal my agnostizism (for details see ref below) and this became the latent topic of the circle. There were two key points:
1) The other members found my presence an inspiration and the critical points I made were taken as a challenge stimulating discussion above the (usual?) conformity. Actually I often see doubting as a part of spiritual experience. I didn’t see clear updating on my input. But it might have made their model more complex.
2) I did actually update a bit toward theism by considering the following evidence:
I argued that my view of reality (see ref) is consistent with a God (but doesn’t need one by Occams razor) but doesn’t really admit miracles (instead assuming unusal or unlikely phenomena).
They ‘argued’ that if God is powerful enough to ‘abuse’ physics (to ‘simulate’ miracles) than what is the difference to God just using special miracle physics i.e. locally altering gravity? (they didn’t use this terminology).
This was new evidence and I have to agree that it might not make much difference in the complexity penalty (razor-wise; though this might need to be looked at in detail). But it could explain mircales much better.
Thus I updated on this making theism less implausible than before.
Beside these points I was mindful of the whole home group experience. It felt friendly and benign.
After my sister attended our Hamburg LW meetups two times I couldn’t any longer turn down her invitation to attend her christian home group—at least not without feeling unfair. This is a short account of what came out of that.
One topic of that home group meeting was “belief and science—conflict or not?” so there was lots of opportunities to tie in rational arguments (actually I had prepared by printing out this; I didn’t use it as is but I did cite Eliahs ‘experiment’ as an example—for funny effect).
I didn’t conceal my agnostizism (for details see ref below) and this became the latent topic of the circle. There were two key points:
1) The other members found my presence an inspiration and the critical points I made were taken as a challenge stimulating discussion above the (usual?) conformity. Actually I often see doubting as a part of spiritual experience. I didn’t see clear updating on my input. But it might have made their model more complex.
2) I did actually update a bit toward theism by considering the following evidence: I argued that my view of reality (see ref) is consistent with a God (but doesn’t need one by Occams razor) but doesn’t really admit miracles (instead assuming unusal or unlikely phenomena). They ‘argued’ that if God is powerful enough to ‘abuse’ physics (to ‘simulate’ miracles) than what is the difference to God just using special miracle physics i.e. locally altering gravity? (they didn’t use this terminology). This was new evidence and I have to agree that it might not make much difference in the complexity penalty (razor-wise; though this might need to be looked at in detail). But it could explain mircales much better. Thus I updated on this making theism less implausible than before.
Beside these points I was mindful of the whole home group experience. It felt friendly and benign.
For reference: Baseline of my opinion (esp. the last section)